


Running From Lions

by LiquidPaper



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt, Kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:10:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiquidPaper/pseuds/LiquidPaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John, accessing his situation at the bottom of an emotional pit, is unsure if it's really worth it to try and climb out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running From Lions

He can function, contrary to the belief of his _therapist_ , he just doesn't really have the will to. 

Like when he came back from Afghanistan. 

He’d like to think he could probably find a job and everything, but he didn't.

Not that he couldn't, of course, he wasn't really even attempting to really cope, brushing everything off and remaining strong, just like the army taught him.

But he _had_ (emphasis on _had_ ) someone to rely on, someone who could easily make him insanely angry, but saved him nonetheless.  That person was gone in an instant, a flurry of flailing limbs, stilled by that _awful_ pavement. 

He's tried to move on and he's not stuck and he won't say he is, but he instinctively knows that it will be ten times harder to move on this time.  As they say, you don't know what you have until you've lost it.

He's not weak, he’s also seen people die, but never seen someone like Sherlock Holmes, if only he was able to call Sherlock a _human_ , someone who brushed off people’s lives like dust; die for him.  His last name was _Holmes_ , for crying out loud, although John was better at holding it all in.

He’s never had that kind of close friendship before, not exactly the most popular in college. He’s been in love, of sorts as well; has gotten stronger because of it, hurt more deeply from the loss than anything though.

He's had friends, but none like Sherlock; that one person, that one, insane(ly) brilliant person, was a ladder out of a hole he barely registered he was in; and now he is back in that hole, just it’s about 50 feet deeper. That ladder is still up there, 50 feet above him and he can climb with sheer willpower, but there’s no more **Sherlock** waiting at the top and he knows that.

 

He isn't quite sure that he actually wants to make the climb up if he's not there. 

 

Because, he won't admit of course, that the former(?) world's _only_ consulting detective was his savior, because he wasn't really.  He was the one that grabbed on to John and pulled him along, convenient or inconvenient, it didn't matter.  John’s will to survive was revived and he was in a place that even the most stubborn of his demons could not affect him.

Problem was that Sherlock's only **real** thorn-in-his-side could.  That thorn eventually became a knife and took Sherlock away from John's side, but never from his mind and from his now very, very guarded, wounded, **breaking** , _struggling_ , heart. 

So, yes, John is the "strong army man", but without Sherlock, that is just an image, a mirage that fades in the early hours of the morning as he replays the **fall** of the only man he would ever bestow the title of his  best friend.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and leave questions and comments below! Critique welcome, I have a lot of work to do with my writing.  
> This started as an explanation for how I wanted to write John after the fall, then molded to this.


End file.
